ART IN REVIEW

ART IN REVIEW; Zwelethu Mthethwa

By HOLLAND COTTER

Published: June 16, 2000

Jack Shainman Gallery

513 West 20th Street

Chelsea

Through June 24

Zwelethu Mthethwa, who is making his New York solo debut, is best known for his vivid color photographs, which were among the highlights of ''Liberated Voices: Contemporary Art From South Africa'' at the Museum for African Art in SoHo last season.

Taken in black rural settlements in the vicinity of Capetown, the pictures are portraits of domestic interiors and their occupants. The houses are makeshift and cramped but the walls are brightly decorated with collages of magazine pages, product labels and advertising posters. The paradox is that life-enhancing ornament is also evidence of a global plenty still far removed from most of South Africa's black citizens.

The artist has enlarged his prints to almost life size for this show, which gives his subjects monumentality and his pictures greater immediate impact in Chelsea's oversize spaces. At the same time, part of the dynamic of this work is its compression of a world of detail into a compact form, and enlargement to this scale dilutes that effect. (The same was true with large prints of Seydou Keita's photographs at Gagosian a few years ago.)

Mr. Mthethwa also does black-and-white work, which has been little seen locally. Examples from the series ''Black Men and Masculinity'' are included here; they examine how same-sex gestures of affection have different meanings in different cultures. In this case, the images have been digitally transferred to canvas using pigment, and again the format is problematic.

One appreciates the conceptual gesture of elevating photographs to the stature of paintings, but the results come across looking merely bland and expensive. Maybe context is the key. When the pieces were originally exhibited in South Africa, the combination of documentary-style image and prestige medium may have packed more of a punch. HOLLAND COTTER